Suella Braverman challenges Sunak to cut ‘unsustainable’ net migration

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Thousands of illegal migrants earmarked for Rwanda flights have gone awol



The vast majority of illegal migrants originally identified for removal on asylum flights to Rwanda have gone awol, it has emerged.

Official documents show that only 700 of the original 5,000 people earmarked for deportation are still in “regular contact” with the Home Office.

Home Office officials suggest that only 100 to 150 of these could be detained for the first flights, depending on absconding rates. They admitted the department has “limited capability” to locate migrants once they have left Home Office accommodation.

The risk of migrants absconding, and fresh challenges by their lawyers, have been identified by officials as the biggest threats to getting them onto planes to Rwanda. It could mean officials are left with few or no people for the first flight, according to the documents.

Yvette Cooper, shadow Home Secretary, said: “This is more evidence of Tory chaos on asylum and immigration. Their extortionate and failing Rwanda plan is already costing the taxpayer up to £400 million without a single person being sent, and now we learn that thousands who were due to go have ‘gone missing’.

‘‘This is presumably on top of the 17,000 people the Home Office’s Permanent Secretary acknowledged had disappeared from backlog. It’s time the Prime Minister and Home Secretary got a grip on the mess they have created,’’ Ms Cooper said.

“Instead of wasting even more time and money on the Rwanda scheme that no one believes will work, the Conservatives should adopt Labour’s plan of going after the criminal smuggling gangs making millions from small-boat crossings and speeding up removals by recruiting 1,000 additional staff to form a new fast-track returns unit,” she said.

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Thousands of illegal migrants earmarked for Rwanda flights have gone awol

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Channel migrants given right to work in UK



Channel migrants have been quietly given the right to work in sectors including care, construction and agriculture and can still retain access to state-subsidised bed and board under a Home Office scheme.

Nearly 16,000 asylum seekers, including those who crossed the Channel in small boats, have been allowed to work in a single year, according to data obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) laws.

They have been allowed to work in occupations in which there are recognised staff shortages, and are paid 80 per cent of the going pay rate.

The migrants forgo their £49.13 a week state subsistence allowance if they earn more than that, but can negotiate with the Home Office to remain in asylum accommodation as long as they pay a contribution towards the cost.

On Friday night, Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, and Tory MPs critcised the scheme, warning that it could act as a “pull factor” to encourage migrants to come to the UK illegally.

Mr Farage told The Telegraph: “This is a disaster. Once the traffickers can advertise jobs and free board, even more will want to come. Rwanda is completely irrelevant in comparison to this.”

The scheme giving migrants the right to work allows them to do so if their application remains unresolved after a year and they have yet to be granted leave to remain in the UK, but the Home Office has refused to reveal how many people benefit from it.

The FOI data obtained by The Telegraph has revealed the figures for the first time. It shows that they have ballooned, largely as a result of a 10-fold increase in the backlog of asylum seekers waiting over a year for a decision and a record surge in migrants crossing the Channel.

The data show that 19,231 migrants applied for work permits in 2022 and 15,706 applications were granted. That represented nearly a third of all the 51,000 asylum seekers in the one-year backlog of claims in 2022. Fewer than 5,000 were waiting more than a year in 2016.

Immigration experts believe the number of working asylum seekers for 2023 could have increased even further because of the extra demand for cheap foreign labour to plug staff shortages in care homes, the NHS, construction and agriculture. Backlogs of asylum seekers waiting over a year rose to 61,000 last year.

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Elderly couple told they had to sell home to house asylum seekers

Councils are compulsorily purchasing empty properties to meet a surge in the number of asylum seekers being granted leave to remain in the UK.

Council chiefs have complained they are not being given enough time to find alternative accommodation for successful asylum seekers because of the Home Office’s faster decision-making to clear huge backlogs of cases.

The policy has been highlighted by the plight of an elderly couple who were told they had to give up their home to asylum seekers because of a shortage of suitable accommodation.

Jose and Ted Saunders said they were “shocked” to be told by North Northamptonshire Council that their mid-terraced house in Rushden, near Wellingborough, was deemed to be empty or derelict, enabling the authority to force them to sell it.

The letter said the council was seeing a “considerable increase” in positive immigration decisions being made in favour of asylum seekers, mainly single men, and the authority was “struggling” to source suitable accommodation for them.

It added: “The ideal long-term solution would be to provide accommodation by using empty properties which would benefit owners and the project.” It said the council could make a compulsory purchase order on the property.

Council chiefs said they had to adopt such tactics because of the faster processing of asylum claims by the Home Office. “In terms of trying to acquire more social housing, councils will adopt a variety of measures, one of them being identifying empty properties that they can bring back into use,” said a senior council source.

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Refugee who wore paraglider image at protest to have asylum status reviewed



The refugee who wore a paraglider image at a pro-Palestine protest is to have her immigration status reviewed, The Telegraph understands.

Heba Alhayek, 29, was one of three women convicted this week under the Terrorism Act after they displayed the images following the October 7 terror attack on Israel which killed 1,200 people and saw Hamas fighters cross the border using paragliders.

The three, including Noimutu Olayinka Taiwo and Pauline Ankunda, were handed conditional discharges for “carrying or displaying an article to arouse reasonable suspicion” that they were supporters of Hamas.

Alhayek was granted refugee status in the UK after claiming that her life would be in danger if she returned to Gaza because of her family’s criticism of Hamas, her lawyer told the court.

It is understood the Home Office is now looking into the issues arising from her conviction with a spokesman saying supporting a terrorist group would not be tolerated.

The Government is, however, powerless to take action to increase the sentences. Because the charges against the three women were “summary” offences only triable in the magistrates court, they are not covered by the scheme that allows the Attorney General to seek to reverse “unduly lenient” sentences.

After the sentence, the Jewish Leadership Council said that the women had got off “scot-free”.

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Here in Brabant, the police previously found large groups of illegal immigrants traveling to England



The discovery of eleven illegal refugees in Eindhoven is anything but an isolated incident. For years, people have been trying to travel secretly or by truck or van via a Dutch port to - often - England.

That number has been increasing lately. But for years, large groups of foreigners have sometimes been found in trucks or containers in Brabant.

A number of foreigners were also stopped around the port of Moerdijk on their journey to England. In September 2018, the police even found 37 men and women in two days. They came from Eritrea and Uganda and were in a refrigerated truck full of tuna and wine, destined for Lidl in England.

A then 57-year-old British driver was arrested in 2021 on suspicion of human smuggling along the highway in Geldrop . He transported ten foreigners. These were men from Iraq and Iran. That same week, eleven refugees were found in a vehicle in Veghel.

A very large group of refugees was found in Hoek van Holland last December. On Sinterklaas evening, the Marechaussee found no fewer than 47 illegal aliens here . The trailer was checked just before the Dutch driver was to make the crossing to the United Kingdom. The driver has been arrested for human smuggling.

A 28-year-old man was arrested for the discovery on Beatrixkade in Eindhoven this week. He is suspected of human smuggling . The container he was caught in came from France and was on its way to Britain. The refugees probably came from Vietnam and Iraq. It is still unclear what will happen to them. The man is currently in custody.

The number of people trying to travel illegally to England via a Dutch port has increased noticeably in recent months . According to the military police, the increase can mainly be explained by the bad weather. British and French coast guards notice that this makes crossing with your own boat more risky and that this smuggling method is used less.

Why is England usually the promised land? On the one hand, because family members often already live there. On the other hand, Veerle Slegers, director of the Tilburg center for European cooperation Portagora, told this news site : "The informal economy is much larger there. London would collapse economically without the illegal circuit. It is much easier to set up a business there.”

Eindhoven Dagblad

(Original text is in Dutch)

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Government defeated in Lords over Rwanda Bill



The Government has been defeated multiple times in the House of Lords over the Rwanda Bill as peers voted add tougher safeguards to the scheme.

Amendment 2, which was supported by 274 peers to 172 on Monday, states: “This amendment seeks to ensure that the eventual Act is fully compliant with the rule of law while maintaining full compliance with international and domestic law.”

Peers proceeded to back Amendment 4, which requires there to be proof that Rwanda is safe before any deportation flights take off.

Then they voted with a majority of 91 to allow Parliament’s designation of Rwanda as a safe country to be “rebutted by credible evidence presented to decision-makers, including courts and tribunals”.

The vote is likely to set into motion ‘ping pong’ between the Lords and the Commons when the Bill eventually returns for votes by MPs, although it is unlikely the Lords will be able to scupper the plan altogether as this back and forth can only happen three times before the Government can invoke the Parliament Act and override the Upper House.

It came as Lord Clarke, a former Tory chancellor, said the Supreme Court was “likely” to “strike down” Rishi Sunak’s flagship deportation policy again.

Sunak knew that all along!

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It's all a smokescreen. Illegals are a minor problem, but nowhere near as much a problem as 'legal' migration. It is the latter that is changing the face of this country.

We are a small, already overcrowded, country; we can't continue to allow unfettered migration.